Engineering Commons^™

The Production Of Epistemic Culture And Agency During A First-Grade Engineering Design Unit In An Urban Emergent School, Heidi B. Carlone, Alison K. Mercier, Salem R. Metzger

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Primary school practices are often bound by traditions that perpetuate compliance and skills-based, decontextualized, rote memorization activities. These histories of practice, prevalent in schools serving mostly Black and Brown children, make it inordinately difficult for students to author themselves as knowledge builders (i.e., with epistemic agency), which is a form of injustice. Engineering is a potentially fertile context to support the creation of epistemic culture, whereby young students’ assets are recognized, named, and leveraged as they create and shape the group’s disciplinary knowledge. The authors investigated this potential. The primary research question was: How do first-grade students in an urban …